European Union migrants work harder than Britons, says Viviane Reding

European migrants are more likely to work harder than their British
counterparts, a senior Brussels official says

Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European CommissionPhoto: REUTERS

By Bruno Waterfield, and Christopher Hope

10:00PM GMT 10 Feb 2014

European migrants are more likely to work harder than their British counterparts, a senior Brussels official has claimed.

Viviane Reding – a Commission vice-president who was visiting London on Monday to debate the EU with foreign office minister David Lidington – said that more EU migrants were “economically active” than British nationals.

In an interview with French journalists she claimed that 77 per cent of EU migrants are economically active, compared to 72 per cent of British nationals.

She added: “It is ideology and feelings in the British debate, not facts.”

Miss Reding also dismissed attempts by the Government to limit access to benefits for migrants to reduce incentives for immigrants to come to the UK.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has indicated that he would like EU immigrants to have to wait for up to two years to claim benefits - rather than the three month period and had support for such a dramatic extension from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

However, Miss Reding said that while 93 per cent of welfare claims were from Britons, just 2.1 per cent were from EU nationals and 4.8 per cent from those outside the EU. She added: “There should be no cherry picking.”

Miss Reding also set her face against attempts by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU before a potential in-out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in 2017.

She said: “There will be no repatriation of EU powers. It is not our problem, it is not us making the demands. You are either ‘in’ or ‘out’.

“British sovereignty is mainly in their head because they've signed the EU treaty and most business is in Europe.”

Miss Reding attacked what she described as Britain’s “yellow press” for peddling “misinformation” about immigration.

She said: “Often the problems between Britain and the EU more in theory than practice. There is ideological noise and misinformation from the yellow press.

"The most powerful parliament in Europe is the European Parliament. Seventy per cent of laws in this country are co-decided there.”

Earlier Miss Reding warned that the UK would not be able to opt out of EU freedom of movement laws while keeping other conditions of membership.

She told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “That is not possible. You take them all or you leave them all.”

Miss Reding said that the UK had signed up to four freedoms, covering the free movements of goods, capital, services and people.

She said: “And all these free movements are linked not only to rights, but also to obligations. You take them all or you leave them all.”

She added: “Do you know that Great Britain is the biggest exporter of people of the EU – 2.2million British people have chosen to go to the EU, you are the third biggest exporter of people in the world.

“That means British people like to go out, other people like to come in. That is the freedom that we have given ourselves in democracies.”